


Take me home by rock and stone

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fall of Gondolin, Family, Gen, inspired by the Book of Lost Tales version
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4131634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Turgon looks down from his tower as his city burns and dies around him, and thinks about the home he loves, and the people he has lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take me home by rock and stone

**Author's Note:**

> Partly inspired by [this quote](http://kanafinwhy.tumblr.com/post/120100654952/then-said-the-king-great-is-the-fall-of) from the Book of Lost Tales version of the Fall of Gondolin.

He climbed the tower steps wearily, the cries and the ringing clash of swords outside in the square fading into the background as his boots struck the stone-paved stairs. The sound of steps on stone was a good one, Turgon thought, listening to the echoes resounding in the spiral staircase. 

His fingers trailed along the rail, feeling the polished wood he knew so well. These stairs that he had climbed every day for so long. This tower that had his very heart set into its stones. 

He knew he could not leave it behind to fall without him.

Idril had escaped, and some of their people had doubtless been able to follow her, and that was what mattered. Turgon reflected momentarily on his daughter and her mortal husband ruling their people, and nodded to himself in approval. She had Tuor now, and Eärendil. And she was ready. 

But it pained him still to think of her grief, the fear that would follow their people as surely as the pursuing might of Morgoth would.

_She deserves so much better. She deserves all, and so does her son, your grandson. And you failed to provide it._

He grimaced, setting his mouth in a firm line.  _Hard as stone, solid, immoveable. Able to weather any storm._  He repeated the words to himself, making a rhythm as he climbed.

That was what his father had been, he knew. His father and his brother, the two who had had to die for him to be crowned king of a people he could not rule.

 _That you were afraid to rule,_  said a cruel voice in his head. 

For him, he knew, there would be no weathering this storm. 

That was why he kept climbing. 

He came at last to room at the top of the tower, with its wide window that looked down into the courtyard. 

The window was open, the light pale curtains stirred and lifted by the wind from outside. Beyond the window he could see only sky, its star-strewn velvet blackness blotted with smoke from the below, the only visible sign that anything was wrong.

He went to the window and looked down.

Far below, at the base of the tower, Turgon could see the black tide of the orcs, fighting with his own soldiers in their bright helms. He could hear cries of pain from the dying, war cries and shouts of defiance… there was a roar and a burst of glowing red as a balrog lumbered into the square, wreathed in roiling flame and hefting a fearful black axe.

 _An axe like that split Findekáno’s helm and his skull beneath,_ he thought abstractly. His grief for his brother, he realised, was strangely detached from the event itself. He had not seen Fingon die, and he could barely imagine that it had really happened.

He knew it  _had_  of course; he had been told of his brother’s death later, he had wept and paced and lost sleep, and then he had taken up the crown and ruled, setting his face in stone once more lest he break. But he had still wept after, silently in the night, and the ache in his heart had never really receded. 

Nor had the guilt. 

 _If you had been there earlier, if you had not hidden for all those years perhaps things could have been different_ …

He knew he should be down there, fighting alongside his people.  _Ah well_ , he thought bitterly.  _You were already too late to save Findekáno, to fight at his side. Elenwë slipped away before you could save her. You were not there to help your father either, or Findaráto who died in the dark with no one to fight alongside him. Is not holding back the way you chose, all those years ago?_

He could feel tears on his face as the hot wind from the burning below stirred his hair and his clothes about him, rising suddenly as the flames in the courtyard licked higher and higher. 

Glingal and Belthil were burning, he realised; they were caught in the hungry fires. His fair trees that he had crafted in memory of that which he had lost were disappearing behind the oily black smoke, and all of a sudden rage lit in him, hot and poisonous as the fumes.

Far below he could see some of the guard of the houses of the Golden Flower and the Heavenly Arch being forced backwards, giving ground to the enemy as blood spilled upon the white paving stones. The sight only fed his anger. 

 _What would Findekáno do?_  

He knew, of course, what his brother would do; Fingon would be down there fighting alongside his people. Turgon knew though, without a sort of weary certainty, that that was not to be his part any longer. He could take up no weapon more, and besides the fight was lost already. 

 _What would Findekáno do, when hope failed?_  

That, at least, he thought he could answer. 

With a bitter laugh, he cried aloud down to the warriors in the square, his voice ringing upon stone. “ _Great is the victory of the Noldoli!_ ” It was a lie, he knew, and a pitiful one at that. But so were so many things, and the orcs at least seemed to pause a moment at the sound of his voice. 

They tipped their heads back and shouted and jeered up at him, some shooting black arrows which fell short of the top of the tower where he stood. 

It was only a small distraction, but it was a distraction; Glorfindel led what was left of his forces forward in a charge, his sword singing and flashing in the firelight as Turgon watched from high above. 

He knew there would be no victory. But every moment of delay gave Idril a moment longer to lead the survivors away. Every moment was another claimed back from the darkness.  _And wasn’t that all you were ever trying to do, Turukáno Ñolofinwion?_  said the voice in the back of his mind.  _Even when you began this, you knew every moment was a grain of sand, falling away one by one until the darkness came, inevitable as the slow grinding of wind and water on rock. You have had long enough in this world_. 

The night wind was rising again, tugging at his hair, his clothes, the curtains that billowed beside him. He could smell the acrid smoke, the wafting clouds of it illuminated with bright flashes of fire from below, from within. He clenched his hands on the stone window ledge, the carvings upon it scraping his knuckles. It was a good pain though, he thought; he was here caught between the rock and the foul air. His spirit lay already in these stones, more than in his body, and they could not take it out, even were they to grind the city to dust and ash.

He thought of the times he had climbed up to his father’s cairn on the mountain, standing on the pinnacle. That high up, the air was glimmering bright and frozen, the wind biting. It was the divide between the rock and the air, he knew, where the eagles made their eyries and where he felt as though he could simply take wing and fly. 

He had had memorials made for Elenwë, Argon and Aredhel, placed beside their father’s cairn, and then later one for Fingon. He had never expected to be the last one left, he had thought bitterly, as he had bowed his newly-crowned head to lay a golden  _elanor_  flower upon his brother’s stone. He pictured Fingon doing the same for him, and wondered if his brother would have even made him a grave.  _Certainly I did not show enough loyalty to his kingship to deserve one_. 

After that he had gone up there more often, to speak to them. He knew they could not hear him from the Halls, of course, nor did he think they would particularly want to listen even if they could. He was not sure  _he_  wanted them to. But he spoke to them all the same, all the years of words he had lost. 

He stared out into the blackness once more, trying to fix his eyes upon the stars through the smoke.  _Any minute now. Death must come for me soon. It’s been long enough. No more._

Fear coursed through him suddenly and unexpectedly at that, a low, visceral and instinctive fear like the bolt of panic that comes from leaning too far out over a great height. Turgon growled in frustration.  _You knew it was coming. You were prepared._  

 _You could still flee_ , said another voice.  _Come down from here and run with your daughter. It would be easy._

 _No_ , he thought, calm once more as the stone scraped his clenched knuckles.  _There’s nothing for me out there. All my heart is here, and in Gondolin will be my tomb, under rock and stone. It was always meant to be thus, right from the start._

He stared determinedly back out at the stars, hoping desperately that those he had left would forgive him, though he did not deserve it he knew. 

There were tears falling freely down his cheeks now, though his face was still as stone. Far below there was a deep rumble, as of breaking rocks, and he felt the floor shake. 

Turgon closed his eyes and pressed his hands to the stone as the wind rose.

_This earth, this air. I have loved it for so long, laboured over it, placed my heart in its keeping. But now I must leave my body to it, buried under broken rock._

As the final shuddering crash came and the tower began to tilt, he thought:  _will I see them again, the ones with their names carved into the rock, into my heart?_

_Will I go home?_


End file.
